Hat Trick of Awards for SOAS in Social Sciences

22 March 2010

SOAS Principal & Director Professor Paul Webley, along with Professor Laurence Harris and Professor Laixang Sun from the Department of Financial & Management Studies, have been appointed Academicians of the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS).

The Academy's mission is to promote social sciences in the UK for the public benefit and responds to government and other consultations on behalf of the social science community. Academicians are distinguished scholars and practitioners from academia and the public and private sectors who are recognised for their contribution to the social sciences.

“This is a wonderful honour for SOAS and reflects the quality of our teaching and research in this field,” said Paul Webley. “Our social science is very distinctive in terms of its theoretical approach and its strong regional emphasis.”

Professor Webley’s research is concerned with the contribution that psychology can make to the understanding of problems that are traditionally seen as the concern solely of economics, with a focus on personal finance, tax compliance and children’s economic behaviour. Professor Harris’s research focuses on corporate finance, ethics and finance, central banking and macroeconomics, while Professor Sun’s research looks at corporate governance and corporate finance, comparative economics, Chinese economy, Chinese business management and applied econometrics.

They will join the School's three other Academicians of the Academy - Vice Principal Nirmala Rao, Professorial Research Associate in the Department of History, Tom Tomlinson, and Professor of Economics in the Department of Financial & Management Studies, Christine Oughton.

Over the last year, SOAS academics have won a number of awards for their research and academic excellence in fields such as anthropology and economics. In February, the School’s Faculty of Languages & Cultures was honoured with the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education for its teaching of the languages of Africa, Asia and the Middle East.